Re: Berlin-3 Open Access Conference, Southampton, Feb 28 - Mar 1 2005

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

There are compelling reasons why institutional repositories (IRs) just
make sense, and good reasons which have nothing to do with author's
desires for OA why filling the IRs takes time, for now at least.

No university can afford to subscribe to all of the journals that are
published.  Without an IR, the university does not have ready access to
the work of its own staff.  One example is the Library Community in the
D-Space at Simon Fraser University Library, where I work.  A large
percentage of the articles are from journals the university does not
subscribe to - not because they are too expensive, or not valuable (these
are titles like Collection Building and Letter of the LAA, or Library
Association of Alberta).  It's just that no university can afford to
subscribe to absolutely everything.

For the author, the IR is a convenient way of ensuring one's work is
securely archived, as well as sharing with colleagues.  When a copy is in
the IR, you can provide the link to anyone, without worrying whether their
library has a subscription or not.  This maximizes the author's impact -
something any author is concerned about, whether to advance their career,
or to share information they believe is important.

Once universities and authors fully realize these benefits, submitting
work to the IR will be a no-brainer, IMHO, with or without a mandate.

In the meantime, many IR projects are either in early project or planning
phases at this time.  There is a learning curve for many people - for
authors, publishers, and IR staff to figure out permissions and that sort
of thing, for example.

Two factors will drive a rapid increase in submissions to IRs, in my
opinion.  First, once there are enough fully filled IRs out there to point
to so that the benefits of having one become obvious to all.  At the
institutional level, this means the IR needs to be filled to a certain
point before promotion is likely to be fully effective.  Secondly,
efficient procedures need to be worked out - so that authors do not need
to wade through complex copyright transfer agreements to try to discern
whether self-archiving is allowed or not, for example.  As soon as a
university has these latter figured out, then self-archiving becomes a
matter of a few keystrokes, as Stevan Harnad is wont to remind us.

A personal view by:

Heather G. Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phone: 604-268-7001
Fax: 604-291-3023
Email:  heatherm@eln.bc.ca
Web: http://www.eln.bc.ca